"Grapple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Milton here into my own weak plaster; the words are well known, but cannot be too well known. "Though all the winds of doctrine," he says, "were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter? Her confuting is the best and surest suppressing." Here in Rome genius rots. The saddest words I almost ever heard were from a young ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... both Paris and Adam Made mischief enough in their day:— God be praised that the fate of mankind, my dear Madam, Depends not on us, the same way. For, weak as I am with temptation to grapple, The world would have ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... putting his books in order, and as they were generally very old ones, clouds of dust were flying around him. He had on a pair of large gloves such as hedgers use. His present appearance put me in mind of my uncle, Dr. Boswell's[24] description of him, 'A robust genius, born to grapple ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... rivalry in doing good? No one doubts that the lot of each member of society would be infinitely better under such conditions; why not strive to bring about such conditions? Is it visionary to hope and labor for this end? "Where there is no vision the people perish." It is a "death grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word." The old system has broken down; it can let loose the furies, but it cannot bind them; it is impotent to save. The question is not whether the Word will triumph—that is certain—but ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... work or amusement, the angry glow is ever before our eyes, colouring our vision, colouring our thoughts, colouring our emotions for good or for ill. We cannot escape it. Our personal destinies are inextricably interwoven with the fate directing the death grapple of the thousand miles or so of battle line, and arbitrating on the doom of ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... the control of such an obedient geni," said he, quietly. "But good luck on your trip; and while you are gone, I'll grapple with the ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... of the American heart. This phantom, this siren of secession, with her enticing song, seems to have lulled to sleep the better part of human nature. At the sound of her voice, and the flash of her eye, men have sprung to arms, to grapple with the life of the nation, because it was free! They have followed, at the beck of the siren, over desolated homes; they have trampled over the dead corpses of murdered brothers, and innocent women and children. They ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... their wild winter warfare, whilst during the earlier months of the winter there was no certainty of carrying on any successful operations. Heavy rain and soft snow were too much even for the hardy Rangers to grapple with. They were practically useless now till the frost came and fastened its firm ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... time in the midst of my troubles with Frank Merrills, had been sick for a long time, and at one time was not expected to recover. I was not then able to attend to business and felt much depressed on that account. It was hard indeed to grapple with so much in one year, but I tried to make the best of it and to feel that these trials, troubles and disappointments sent upon us in this world, are blessings in disguise. Oh! if we could really feel this to be so in all of our troubles, it would be well for us in this ...
— History of the American Clock Business for the Past Sixty Years, - and Life of Chauncey Jerome • Chauncey Jerome
... her late experience; but it was hard to comprehend this unlooked-for and apparently deliberate excess of degradation. But gradually the mist cleared away from her bewildered mind, and she recognized the reality of what had befallen her. Still, however, her thoughts could not at once grapple with the overwhelming sense of the indignity and suffering cast upon her. She could not doubt that she had been expelled from her lord's house—cast out unprotected and friendless in the midst of night, with undeserved reproaches. But, for all that, a delusive hope clung to her. He could not mean ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... eyes travelled idly over the handsome furnishings of that choicely appointed chamber, and rested at last upon the lean, crooked figure of a man whose back was towards me and who was busy with some phials at a table not far distant. Then recollection awakened also in me, and I set my wits to work to grapple with my surroundings. I looked through the open window, but from my position on the bed no more was visible than the blue sky and a faint haze ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... any size desired without impairing distinctness of vision!" He wrinkled his brow and fell to making geometrical diagrams on the envelope, but neither his theoretical mathematics nor his practical craftsmanship could grapple with so obscure a request, and he forgot to eat while he pondered. He consulted his own treatise on the Rainbow, but to no avail. At length in despair he took up the last letter, to find a greater surprise awaiting him. A communication ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... another instant at arm's length from these dim terrors, which grow more obscurely formidable, the longer I delay to grapple with them. Now for the onset! And to! with little damage, save a dash of rain in the fact and breast, a splash of mud high up the pantaloons, and the left boot full of ice-cold water, behold me at the ...
— Beneath An Umbrella (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... fight is done, They bid you send your sword." And he answered, "Grapple her stern and bow. They have asked for the steel. They shall have it now; ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... up, keeping the table between them. He looked at the door, calculating whether he could make a spring for the ax before Carlson could grapple him. Carlson read in the glance an intention to retreat, made a quick stride to the door, closed it sharply, locked it, put the key in his pocket. He stood a moment looking Mackenzie over, as if surprised by the length he unfolded ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... assumed a comfortable position. He could sit there and allow his mind to grapple with numerous things that interested him; at the same time feel that he was keeping a strict watch. Time passed on. The air happened to be coming from the direction of the town, so that when the clock in the church tower struck the hour he could ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... a wholly new and ideal light. I endeavoured in various ways to secure all that seemed most attractive about the project, or which filled my soul with longing. My intercourse with Lehrs had, on the whole, given a decided spur to my former tendency to grapple seriously with my subjects, a tendency which had been counteracted by closer contact with the theatre. This desire now furnished a basis for closer study of philosophical questions. I had been astonished at times to hear even the grave and ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... was strong to do and dare: If a host had withstood him there, He had braved a host with little care In his lusty youth and his pride, Tough to grapple though weak to ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... fear that came with the knowledge was largely destroyed as it came. There was no sudden overwhelming sense of danger that passed through thought so quickly that it was difficult to catch up and grapple with it—no need for the warning to "be not afraid of sudden fear," such as might have been present had we collided head-on with a crash and a shock that flung everyone out of his bunk to the floor. Everyone had time to give each condition of danger attention as it came along, and the ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... usage in the world; the sun and rain hardly fell on me unpaid. I've earned every inch of this flesh and muscle, worked for it as it grew; the knowledge that I have, scanty enough, but whatever thought I do have of God or life, I've had to grapple and struggle for. Other men grow, inhale their being, like yonder tree God planted and watered. I think sometimes He forgot me,"—with a curious woman's tremor in his voice, gone in an instant. "I scrambled up like that scraggy parasite, without ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... over other prophecies of our national decadence. The "Oxford English Dictionary" has not yet unfolded the last of its coils, which yet are ample enough to enfold us in seven words for every three an active man can grapple with. Yet the warning has point, and a particular point, for those who aspire to write poetry: as Francis Thompson has noted in ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... hear the chuckle of satisfaction and then he gasped, for the old man rose from his cot and tried to grapple with the younger man, who gave him a brutal push, throwing him back onto ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... and that the more one becomes a musician the more one is also a philosopher? The grey sky of abstraction seems thrilled by flashes of lightning; the light is strong enough to reveal all the details of things; to enable one to grapple with problems; and the world is surveyed as if from a mountain top—With this I have defined philosophical pathos—And unexpectedly answers drop into my lap, a small hailstorm of ice and wisdom, of problems solved. Where am I? Bizet makes me productive. ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... summer term some teaching work was offered him at Merton, and by Mr. Grey's advice he accepted it, thus postponing for a while that London curacy and that stout grapple with human need at its sorest for which his soul was pining. 'Stay here a year or two,' Grey said bluntly; 'you are at the beginning of your best learning time, and you are not one of the natures who can do without books. You will be all the better worth having afterwards, and ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... it is often used without a definite reference to any antecedent, and is sometimes a mere expletive, and sometimes the representative of an action expressed afterwards by a verb; as, "Whether she grapple it with the pride of philosophy."—Chalmers. "Seeking to lord it over God's heritage."—The Friend, vii, 253. "It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes strong drink."—Prov., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... distant from the right of M. de Luxembourg. The Prince of Orange was encamped at the Abbey of Pure, was unable to receive supplies, and could not leave his position without having the two armies of the King to grapple with: he entrenched himself in haste, and bitterly repented having allowed himself to be thus driven into a corner. We knew afterwards that he wrote several times to his intimate friend the Prince de Vaudemont, saying that he ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... of Ireland, which was supported by a parliamentary grant, at the cost of L2100 per annum; and government proposed to continue this grant. There was another subject, he said, with which, although a difficult one, he was prepared to grapple. The bill only founded colleges in Ireland: the question was:—"Should these three colleges be incorporated into one great central university, or should parliament invest each of them with the power of granting degrees ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... influence in the formation of public opinion. That influence is comparatively ineffectual because it is narrowed to the small sphere of domestic life. No one can suppose that an opinion unsupported by authority can have weight enough to grapple with evils which have their root in the lawless part of man's uneducated, undeveloped nature. The most that such a sentiment can do is to enlarge itself by discussion, and every other available method, until it is strong enough to incorporate itself into ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the most part, they have done little more than squat. But then the introduction of the right type of agricultural settlers, though it will not come about of itself, would not seem to be a task beyond the powers of statesmanship to grapple with. ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... to forget its office. While he was passing she clung to the back of her chair and forebore to cry out or otherwise to advertise her emotion. But when the strain was off she sank into her seat and closed her eyes to grapple with the unnerving discovery. It was useless to try to escape from the dismaying fact. The stubble-bearded deck-hand with the manners of a gentleman was most unmistakably a later reincarnation of the pleasantly smiling young man ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... not trust your strength: your Grace and I Must grapple upon even terms no more: So, if he rail me not from my resolution, I shall be strong enough. My Lord the King, my Lord; he sleeps As if he meant to wake no more, my Lord; Is he not ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... whole region; there are the French posts on the northern border, with each a priest and a file of soldiers, and a few Canadian farmers and traders. Under the cover of peace between the French king and the English king, there is a constant grapple between the French soldiers and the English settlers for the possession of the wilds which shall one day be the most magnificent empire under the sun; there are the war parties of Indians falling stealthily upon the English borders to the eastward; there is the steady ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... Daley after a fashion. Don was a fellow who studied hard because he had to. Tim could skim his lessons, make a good showing in class and remember enough of what he had gone over to appear quite erudite. Don had to get right down and grapple with things. He once said enviously, and with as near an approach to an epigram as he was capable of, that whereas Tim got his lessons by inhaling them, he, Don, had to chew them up and swallow them! But when examination time came Don's method ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... she only Stands on the stars. Her small hands grapple Heaven's black bars. Only her deep love Pays the price Of a sight of the ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... then to mark the lord of all, The forest hero, trained to wars, Quivered and plumed, and lithe and tall, And seamed with glorious scars, Walk forth, amid his reign, to dare The wolf, and grapple with the bear. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... question, the fact that there are in this assembly ladies who present themselves as delegates from the oldest societies in America. I expected that Mr. Burnet would, as he was bound to do, if he intended to offer a successful opposition to their introduction into this Convention, grapple with the constitutionality of their credentials. I thought he would come to the question of title. I thought he would dispute the right of a convention assembled in Philadelphia, for the abolition of slavery, consisting of delegates from different States in the Union, and comprised ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... usually characterized it. A shadow seemed to be hanging over her—a shadow, which, although it marred in no way her fresh young beauty, added a deepened pensiveness to her great somber eyes, and seemed to broaden the fringing black ring round the gray pupils. This year the girl had more to grapple with than the mere management of ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... had a grapple with three iron spikes,— It's lowered, and, ha! on a something it strikes! They haul it aboard with a British "heave-ho!" And what it has fished ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... artist who has made science serve him instead of being seduced by her—exemplifies this central idea of Duerer's almost as fully as the Greek masterpieces. The future of art appears to me to lie in the hands of those artists who shall be able to grapple with the new means offered them by the advance of science, as he did, and be as little or even less seduced than he was by the foolish idea that art can become science without ceasing to be art, which has handicapped and defeated the efforts of so many industrious ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... of this kind, muscles inured to work and determined spirits ready to grapple with difficulties, are essential. In such labors, the most useless of all beings is the gentleman with soft hands and luxurious habits. Unfortunately quite a number of pampered sons of wealth had ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... circumstance super-added to her character. Her presence and appearance, in the parish were dreadful; a public outcry was soon raised against her, which, were it not from fear of her power over their lives and cattle, might have ended in her death. None, however, had courage to grapple with her, or to attempt expelling her by violence, lest a signal vengeance might be taken on any who dared to injure a woman that could call in the terrible aid ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... will be, and thus they are continually making clouds for themselves. There are times when we must resolutely take hold of ourselves when the feeling of displeasure comes, as it is sure to do. The will must grapple with these emotions quickly and not let them get into action. Our wills were given us to rule ourselves with. When tempted to be unkind or to be hasty in our words and actions, we should say within ourselves: "I will not speak hasty words. I will control myself ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... evening sunlight came before her, she looked up and stepped outside the open door. She was handling this thing that had happened, taking possession of it. It lay in her mind in the midst of a suddenly stricken and tenderly saddened consciousness. It lay there passively; it did not rise and grapple with her, it was a thing that had happened—in Burra Bazar. The pity of it assailed her. Tears came into her eyes, and an infinite grieved solicitude gathered about her heart. "So?" she said to herself, thinking that he was young and loved his work, ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... nerves. Daly must have heard him and was, no doubt, crouching in the dark, ready to shoot. He tried again to find the pistol, and then with an effort pulled himself together. The next move might draw a shot, but he must risk that and not lie there helpless. Besides, if the fellow missed, he might grapple with and disarm him, and he sprang ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... curve known to science, as hard to represent correctly as a boat or a fiddle—more so; and the delight of successful achievement is proportionately great. Linley Sambourne alone, who was originally trained as an engineer, has been able to grapple with the chimney-pot hat; Walker all but succeeded by the sheer force of ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... the afternoon that Smith called to escort her northward to the field where those idols of Gotham, the Giants, were indulging in a death grapple with their rivals from Chicago in the closing series of the year, with the National League pennant hanging on its result. Her companion had, to be sure, called formally and in due order upon Miss Wardrop and her ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... imaged as concentric circles. The poet may perhaps have passed beyond the latter, but he has confined himself far within the bounds of the former, in designating these critics, as "too petulant to be passive to a genuine poet, and too feeble to grapple with him;——men of palsied imaginations, in whose minds all healthy action is languid;——who, therefore, feed as the many direct them, or with the many ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and vigour is the surest way to make him popular. Calling Mr. Forster "Buckshot" Forster did him no harm. On the contrary, the epithet might have helped him to success had not Mr. Gladstone given way behind him at the most critical moment of his grapple with the revolutionary organisation in Ireland. We hear a great deal about resistance to tyrants being obedience to God, but I fear that obedience to God is not the strongest natural passion of the human ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... Christ's descent into hell—namely, the desire of the Redeemer to make himself known to Socrates, Plato, and the best of the ancient philosophers; and I compared this with Luther's idea, so characteristic of him, that Christ descended into hell in order to have a hand-to-hand grapple and wrestle with Satan. This led Tolstoi to give me a Russian legend of the descent into hell, which was that, when Christ arrived there, he found Satan forging chains, but that, at the approach of the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... but, owing to his surprise at the fury of the assault, so ineffectually that he fell under Hatteraick, the back part of his neck coming full upon the iron bar with stunning violence. The death-grapple continued. The room immediately below the condemned ward, being that of Glossin, was, of course, empty; but the inmates of the second apartment beneath felt the shock of Glossin's heavy fall, and heard a noise as of struggling and of groans. ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... not improve in appearance, my health was completely restored, and when the war came I was in perfect condition for the arduous task I immediately undertook. Moreover, my mind, torpid for a year, was free and refreshed for those practical details it must grapple with at once. I turned the Zattiany palace in Buda Pesth into a hospital. And then for four years I was again an automaton, but this time a necessary and useful one. When I thought about myself at all, it seemed to ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Massachusetts. He was now entering his eighteenth year, and had enlisted in the great army of the Union as a private, with an earnest and patriotic desire to serve his imperiled country in her death-grapple with treason and traitors. He had won his warrant as a sergeant by bravery and address, and had subsequently been commissioned as a second lieutenant for good conduct on the bloody field of Williamsburg, where he had been wounded. The ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... intense desire that he might grapple with his young foe in the death struggle. Willingly would he have accepted such a decision between their rival claims; but he was alone, wounded, exhausted, a faithful dog his sole friend. He felt that the day ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... them something of what Rossetti and Burne-Jones, and certain old Italian masters, were soon to become. In books, they had already learnt from Henry a truer, or at all events a more strenuous, taste; and they would grapple manfully with Carlyle and Browning, and presently Meredith, long before their lives had use or understanding for such ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... vicinity of the Rocky Mountains and their outlying ranges, each in turn assailed us: and then, on the melting of the snow at the first breath of approaching spring, the floods, which were the most virulent antagonists with whom we had to grapple, almost overwhelmed us! There was 'water, water everywhere,' as Coleridge says in his 'Ancient Mariner.' The whole valley, almost as far as you can see, was one vast foaming torrent, that bore down all our puny protections in the shape of ramparts and stockades. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... Laen, continuing his conversation, cried enthusiastically: "The Beggars of the Sea will yet sink the Spanish power. The sea, gentlemen. the sea! To base one's cause on nothing, is the best way! To exult, leap and grapple in the storm! To fight and struggle man to man and breast to breast on the deck of the enemy's ship! To fight and conquer, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... every individual German; and only by energetic, systematic, and continued efforts of Government and people can they prevent a shortage of food from negativing the success of German arms. Yet they feel bound to grapple the problem as one calling for solution by the German people alone, for very small imports of food products can be expected from the neutral countries of Europe, and none at all from the United States and other oversea countries, and the small quantities that do come in will hardly be more than ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of my study of English when I was a girl, and there is no language more difficult to pronounce and enunciate correctly, for an Italian. I was frightened only to think of that, still I drew sufficient courage even from its difficulties to grapple with my task. After a fortnight of constant study, I found myself ready to make an attempt at my recitation. However, not wishing to compromise my reputation by risking a failure, ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... needed no conjunction of planets to tell them that the day was near at hand, when the long desultory duel between Spain and England would end, once and for all, in some great death-grapple. The war, as yet, had been confined to the Netherlands, to the West Indies, and the coasts and isles of Africa; to the quarters, in fact, where Spain was held either to have no rights, or to have forfeited them by tyranny. But Spain itself had been respected by England, as England ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... with a succession of large knobs, and another has its bark pinched up all round at intervals so as to present a great many cutting edges. One sort need scarcely be mentioned, in which all along its length are strong bent hooks, placed in a way that will hold one if it can but grapple with him, for that is very common and not like those mentioned, which the rather seem to be stragglers from the carboniferous period of geologists, when Pachydermata wriggled unscathed among tangled masses worse than these. We employed about ten jolly young Makonde ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... flocked together, reminiscent of former days when another mammoth had been driven over this same cliff; the young grouped about different firesides, and there was talk of feats of strength and daring and an occasional friendly grapple. Slender, sinewy girls, who had girls' ways then as now, ate together and looked about coquettishly and safely, for none had come without their natural guardians. Rarely in the history of the cave men had there been a gathering more generally ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... leather bags strapped to their left arms, clamouring for mysterious crackling documents, much fastened with pins. Owen had never quite understood what it was that these young men did want, and now his detached mind refused even more emphatically to grapple with the problem. He distributed the documents at random with the air of a preoccupied monarch scattering largess to the mob, and the subsequent chaos had to be handled by a wrathful head of the ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... two men that went on pilgrimage; the one began when he was young, the other when he was old: the young man had strong corruptions to grapple with, the old man's were weak with the decays of nature: the young man trode his steps as even as did the old one, and was every way as light as he. Who now, or which of them, had their graces shining clearest, ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... receive a remittance shortly. Printing is a business attended with so little profit here, as there are already so many workmen, that it is almost useless for a stranger to apply. Besides, after a tough grapple, I am just beginning to master the language, and it seems so necessary to devote every minute to study, that I would rather undergo some privation, than neglect turning these fleeting hours into ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... these few precepts in thy memory— Look thou character.[73] Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion'd thought[74] his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel; But do not dull thy palm with entertainment Of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but being in, Bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... it wuz a worthy object, and she would love to help it along, but they had so many expenses of their own to grapple with, that she didn't see her way clear to promise to do anything. She said the girls had got to have some new velvet suits, and some sealskin sacques this winter, and they had got to new furnish the parlors, and send their oldest boy to college, and the girls wanted to have some diamond ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... difficult and heroic task within the limits of human endeavor. It is comparatively easy to run a tilt against a fellow-mortal, or an external evil; but to set our lance in rest against a cherished sin, a habit that has become our second nature, and remorselessly ride it down—to grapple with a secret fault in the solitude of our own soul, with no applauding hands to spur us on, and fight and wrestle for weary months—years perhaps—this does require heroism of the highest order, and the man who can do it is my ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... have preceded and are destined to follow it. But there is good reason to believe, after all, that in one way it will be held remarkable, perhaps even unique,—as an age of violent contrasts, violent extremes. Here we are, seeking (however pathetically) to grapple with problems whose solution would wear an almost millennial tinge. There are men among us—and men of august intellects, too—who urge upon society the adoption of codes and usages which would assume, if practically treated, that the minds and characters ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... their papers by an exceptionally abominable police case. I do not suggest that the police case should have been suppressed; but neither do I believe that regard for public morality had anything to do with their failure to grapple with the performance by the Stage Society. And, after all, there was no need to fall back on Silas Wegg's subterfuge. Several critics saved the faces of their papers easily enough by the simple expedient of saying all they had to say in the tone ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... Clifford, My son a Clifford and Plantagenet. I am to die then, tho' there stand beside thee One who might grapple with thy dagger, if he Had aught of man, or thou of woman; or I Would bow to such a baseness as would make me Most worthy of it: both of us will die, And I will fly with my sweet boy to heaven, And shriek to all the saints among the stars: 'Eleanor of Aquitaine, ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... array'd, Boldly by battery besiege Belgrade; Cossack commanders cannonading come, Deal devastation's dire destructive doom; Ev'ry endeavour engineers essay, For fame, for freedom, fight, fierce furious fray. Gen'rals 'gainst gen'rals grapple,—gracious God! How honors Heav'n heroic hardihood! Infuriate, indiscriminate in ill, Just Jesus, instant innocence instill! Kinsmen kill kinsmen, kindred kindred kill. Labour low levels longest, loftiest lines; Men march 'midst mounds, motes, mountains, murd'rous mines. Now noisy, noxious ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Scornfully the tank slid over into the wide trench and landed with a crash in the bottom. For a moment she lay there without moving. The Germans thought she was stuck. They came running along thinking to grapple with her. But they never reached her, for at once the guns from both sides opened fire ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... notwithstanding the high presumption of his remark, a manful thickness of voice in Alvan's 'That is he!' The rivals had fastened a look on one another, wary, strong, and summary as the wrestlers' first grapple. In fire of gaze, Marko ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... But the spectacle of widespread popular demoralization, of selfish scrambles for plunder, and of feeble administration at the centre of government weighed upon him heavily. It was not the general's business to build up Congress and grapple with finance, but Washington addressed himself to the new task with his usual persistent courage. It was slow and painful work. He seemed to make no progress, and then it was that his spirits sank at the prospect of ruin and defeat, not coming on the field of battle, but from our own vices and our ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... you, too, that only such a world-wide communication of the highest good that has blessed ourselves will correspond to the proved power of that Gospel which treats as of no moment diversities that are superficial, and can grapple with and overcome, and bind to itself as a crown of glory, every variety of character, of culture, of circumstance, claiming for its own all races, and proving itself able to lift them all. 'The Bread of God which came down from heaven' is an exotic everywhere, because it came down from ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Like sharp, quick showers of hail and rain, To beat on the hearts that are bleeding with pain! And many who stare at the close-shut hearse Envy the dead within,—or, worse, Turn away with a keener zest To grapple and revel and sin with the rest! While far apart in a bower of green, Unheeded, unseen, A warbling bird on the topmost bough Merrily pipes to the Poet below, Asking an answer as gay, I trow! But he hears the surging waves without,— The heartless ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... employments, be a match for the cool and sedate controversies they will have to encounter should the Brahmans condescend to enter into the arena against the maimed and crippled gladiators that presume to grapple with their faith? What can be apprehended but the disgrace and discomfiture of whole hosts of tub ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... transferred to the turnkey and the jester. The former held the fool at a decided disadvantage, as he had sprung upon the back of the jester and was also unweakened by previous efforts. But still the fool contended fiercely, striving to turn so as to grapple with his assailant, and wonderingly the free baron for a moment watched that exhibition of virility and endurance. During the wrestling the jester's doublet had been torn open and suddenly the gaze of the king's guest ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... incarnation of the Eternal World, it found the human mind already occupied by human philosophy. Educated men were Platonists, or Stoics, or Epicureans. During the age of Apologetics, which extended from the end of the apostolic age to the death of Origen, the Church was called to grapple with these systems, to know as far as possible what they contained, and to discriminately treat their contents, rejecting some things, utilizing others." "We shall see," he continues, "that Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero exerted more influence than all other philosophic minds ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... for untold time to come, in their inability to return in full to that world they had left, or even to take part in the affairs of this. Surely their case was far worse than his, for after a few years he would be freed from the bondage of matter, and would grapple with the mysteries which had become so fascinating; but with them it was different. Unfitted for either world, without a friend and alone, they must drag out their weary existence until the law of Karma was satisfied. ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... On one she that was eldest of the brood That hunted me so long. And many a word Touching my mother's death was spoke and heard, Till Phoebus rose to save me. Even lay The votes of Death and Life; when, lo, a sway Of Pallas' arm, and free at last I stood From that death grapple. But the Shapes of Blood— Some did accept the judgment, and of grace Consent to make their house beneath that place In darkness. Others still consented not, But clove to me the more, like bloodhounds hot On the dying; till to Phoebus' house once more I crept, and cast ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... glare of the Colonel's windows, and across the deserted grandeur of his lawn, the two small and dishevelled figures dodged and doubled and retreated, only to grapple and trip each other up at last at the foot of the veranda steps, and collapse there, breathless and laughing. But their laughter died quickly, and Judith, pulling the recovered cap over her wind-tossed curls, watched ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... (for our children, if not in our own day,) of delivering America, and, indeed, all Christian lands everywhere, from the thin moribund and watery, but appallingly extensive nuisance of conventional poetry—by putting something really alive and substantial in its place—I have undertaken to grapple with, and argue, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Harper's Ferry, where he remained long after the protecting force of the Confederate army retired, had probably undermined a constitution so vigorous that, in the face of a great exigency, no labor seemed too great or too long for him to grapple with and endure. So, like a ship which, after having weathered the storm, goes down in the calm, the master armorer, soon after he took his quiet post at Fayetteville, was ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... been collecting them, and am willing to believe they may prove entertaining and profitable to the railway traveller and the general reader, relieving the tedium of hours when the mind is not disposed to grapple ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... the source of the missile, tore the British craft, but her effort to grapple with the unterseeboot was in vain. The submarine had dived immediately. No sounds betrayed her presence in the vicinity. Had the U-boat been moving, the churning of her propellers would have ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... "You grapple and hold her, Bill. I'll board her and see what's what," said Gus, pistol in hand, stepping over ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... dust rolling up from their excited march. I hear the shouting of the captains and the yell of the besiegers. The swords clack sharply on the parrying shields, and the vociferation of two armies in death-grapple is horrible to hear. The battle goes on all day, and as the sun is setting Abimelech and his army cry "Surrender!" to the beaten foe. And, unable longer to resist, the city of Shechem falls; and there are pools ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... moved; and on getting up to him I struck him with the lance on the near-side, just behind the neck, and pinned him to the ground. That moment the negro next to me seized the lance and held it firm in its place, while I dashed head foremost into the den to grapple with the snake and to get hold of his tail before he could do ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... (to their duties) and for the protection of property, ordinances, O king, have been established in the world, under the name of chastisement (or punitive legislation). Thither where chastisement, of dark complexion and red eyes, stands in an attitude of readiness (to grapple with every offender) and the king is of righteous vision, the subjects never forget themselves. The Brahmacharin and the house-holder, the recluse in the forest and the religious mendicant, all these walk in their respective ways through fear of chastisement alone. He that is without ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... absolute tact and courage as it seemed most fit to give a clear impression. If you take even those English authors whom we know Burns to have most admired and studied, you will see at once that he owed them nothing but a warning. Take Shenstone, for instance, and watch that elegant author as he tries to grapple with the facts of life. He has a description, I remember, of a gentleman engaged in sliding or walking on thin ice, which is a little miracle of incompetence. You see my memory fails me, and I positively ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the place. I hide from myself no part of the honorable motives which might (and probably did) exclusively govern him in adhering to the place. But not by one atom the less did the grievous results of his inability to grapple with his duties weigh upon all within his sphere, and upon myself, by cutting up the time ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... miscreants had been instilled into Anastasia Joliffe by her aunt. It was, moreover, a standing rule of the house that no strange men were to be admitted on any pretence, unless there was some man-lodger at home, to grapple with them if occasion arose. But the glance was sufficient to confirm her first verdict—he was a gentleman; there surely could not be such things as gentlemen-tramps. So she answered "Oh, certainly," and showed him into Mr Sharnall's ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... I fought in my youth," he said, "and now once more will I, the guardian of my people, seek the combat. I would not bear any sword or other weapon against the dragon if I thought that I could grapple with him as I did with the monster Grendel. But I fear that I shall not be able to approach so close to this foe, for he will send forth hot, raging fire and venomous breath. Yet am I resolute in mood, fearless and resolved ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... me, but only one obeyed; the other had broken an arm in his fall, and was groaning over it piteously. We sprang over the fence and followed the trail through the grain, each step leading us away from the city and assistance, but I thought not of that. My whole desire was to grapple with the villains, and either capture them or end their career. I encouraged my companion to keep up with me in the pursuit; but I was either fleeter of foot, or else he sadly lagged behind, for after ten minutes ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... a little mad and generally silly I should give you my advice upon the subject, willy-nilly; I should show you in a moment how to grapple with the question, And you'd really be astonished at the force of my suggestion. On the subject I shall write you a most valuable letter, Full of excellent suggestions when I feel a little better, But at present I'm afraid I am as mad ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... the lights burn red and warm, Pricks my soul with sudden stare, Glowing through the veils of storm. In the city yonder sleep Those who smile and those who weep, Those whose lips are set with care, Those whose brows are smooth and fair; Mourners whom the dawning light Shall grapple with an old distress; Lovers folded at midnight In their bridal happiness; Pale watchers by beloved beds, Fallen a-drowse with nodding heads, Whom sleep captured by surprise, With the circles round their eyes; Maidens with quiet-taken breath, Dreaming of enchanted bowers; Old men with the mask ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... permanent. That is to say, it must not be merely spasmodic coping with the misery of to-day, but must go on dealing with the misery of to-morrow and the day after, so long as there is misery left in the world with which to grapple. ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... stillness that pervades a room where life and death grapple for mastery, invites and aids that calm, inexorable introspection, which Gotama Buddha prescribes as an almost unerring path to the attainment of peace; and, in the solemn silence of his last and memorable vigil, Dr. Grey brought his heart into complete unmurmuring subjection ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... tempestuous. Home had been to him the only verdant spot in the desert of life. In his wife and children he had centered all affection, and now they were torn from him. The remembrance of their love clung to him like the death grapple of a drowning man, sinking him down into darkness and death. This was followed by a calm a thousand times more terrible, the creeping agony of despair, that brings with it no power ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... into a frenzy; and frenzy never won a ring-battle. Time after time he endeavored to grapple, but always that left stopped him. Warrington played for his face, and to each jab he added a taunt. "That for the little Cingalese!" "Count that one for Wheedon's broken knees!" "And wouldn't San admire that? Remember her? The little Japanese ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... us, and we did find the sunken motor boat, couldn't they grapple for the box of silver images, and steal them?" ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... during the period between 1826 and 1840 that Cincinnati had to grapple with the problem of the immigrating Negroes and the poor whites from the uplands of Virginia and Kentucky. With some ill-informed persons the question was whether that section should be settled by white men or Negroes. The situation became ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various |
